Care and feeding of down comforters

I'm cold-blooded, and also cheap. So I keep a down comforter on my bed shortly after autumn gets in full swing, in the interest of keeping myself as warm as possible while sleeping with the thermostat turned down as low as possible. I leave another down comforter on the livingroom sofa, too, for staying warm while I curl up with a book evenings. Love my down comforters! And great thing I learned about them a few years ago is that you can safely launder a down comforter.

It's true!

Now, I don't actually launder a comforter very often. In fact, I probably launder them only every other year. I usually find that it does the trick to let them air out a couple of times during the winter, and then give them one good airing out by a warm, sunny window in the spring before storing them away for the summer. Here's a roundup of things to do to keep your comforters in good shape for longer.

1. Use a duvet cover, and wear pajamas. The goal here is to minimize how often you launder the comforter by keeping your sweat, drool, and smelly feet from dirtying the comforter case or permeating the down filling with odors. The less often you launder anything, after all, the longer it will look and feel like new. So buy or make a machine-washable duvet cover to protect it. Get two, so when you have to launder one (got cats?), you have another one waiting for you in the linen closet. If your comforter didn't come to you with its own removable cover, lay the comforter out, measure it, and dig your favorite catalog, website, or retailer for one that fits. Or score a few king-size sheets and break out the sewing machine, if you're feeling extra cheap. While it may feel irritating to have buy what's essentially a gigantic pillowcase for this blanket, remember that it'll feel even more irritating to find an indelible stain or undefeatable odor in the comforter in a few months because you didn't protect it.

Wearing some kind of nightclothes as a further barrier between your skin and the comforter will also go a long way toward keeping the comforter fresh. This is a no-brainer for me, because I'm so cold all the time. Paradoxically, though, if you tend to sweat a lot at night, you have even more reason to wear pajamas than I do. You'll have to change your sheets less frequently, and it'll be better for your comforter.

2. Air it out every few weeks. Remove the duvet cover and launder it. Shake out the comforter to evenly distribute the down. Lay it out over a couple of chairs or sturdy clothes drying racks. If you can, set it by a window so that some sunlight can hit it. Let it air out for at least 24 hours, or over the weekend. Then put it back in the duvet cover -- be sure that the duvet cover is 100% dry -- and toss it back onto your bed.

3. Don't be afraid to launder a comforter, but don't do it often. Comforters filled with real down don't come cheap (though, to tell the truth, one of mine was a gift, and I trash-picked the other, Penn Christmas-style, from the trash pile of a neighbor who was moving out). They do need to be deep-cleaned every once in a while -- you'd better believe I laundered the trash-picked one before I used it -- in a way that only laundering in water will do, yet no one wants to ruin an expensive comforter.

First of all, unless it's an emergency (got cats?), wait until the weather warms up. That way, you'll be able to set it outside or by a sunny, open window to really make sure it's dry before you put it away for the season. Now take a gander at the comforter's cleaning instructions. It probably tells you to take it to a professional cleaner. This is "CYA"; you can do the job at home if you have a very large washing machine, or at a laundromat if you don't. Use a mild Woolite-type soap, not detergent, and rinse it at least one extra rinse. Then toss it in an extra-large dryer on low heat. I've seen it advised to put a clean canvas athletic shoe or tennis balls in the dryer as well, to even out the down stuffing; however, I've found it just as simple to stop the dryer every once in a while and gently shake out the blanket instead.

After you run out of quarters or just don't feel like hanging out in the laundromat any more, take the comforter home and lay it out on the chairs or clothes racks for at least 24 hours. If the weather is warm, set it by an open window for some extra UV sterilizing, like I did with my daughter's cloth diapers back in the day. Careful, though! If the pollen is out, a significant amount could fall on the comforter, and you may find yourself mysteriously sneezing when you take it out again next autumn.

4. Fold loosely for storage. When the comforter is totally dry and the house is truly too warm to have it on the bed at night, gather it up, fold it gently and loosely, and store it in a dry, moth-free closet. Since you don't want to compress the down, don't store it in a plastic bag. One idea is to store it, folded, inside a duvet cover, which saves a duvet cover's worth of space in the linen closet during the summer.

And that's that. Four E-Z steps to toasty-warm rowhouse livin' with a down comforter when the temperature falls.

Three old-timey ways to stay warm in cold weather

Between some paying work and a long-awaited week out of town visiting old friends for Thanksgiving, I've neglected this blog! Now I'm back in town and it's gotten actually cold here in Philadelphia. So here's a list of 3 old-timey tricks for beating the cold around the home.

1. Draft dodgers. I don't mean guys who skip signing up with Selective Service. I mean an upholstered roll that you lay at the bottom of a door or window to block cold drafts. You can buy them, or make your own -- but I'm cheap, so I simply roll up an old towel, sheet, or blanket and place it neatly to cover the gap between door and floor. Though I have to re-fold them every couple of days, it still beats hauling out the sewing machine or buying something new.

2. Nightcap. Not a bedtime cocktail, but a literal nightcap: a loose-fitting knit hat or watch cap to keep your head warm while you're sleeping. Seriously, just as if it's Christmas Eve. This is a practice I picked up from going on cold-weather camping trips. No matter how snug the tent or how low-temperature rated the sleeping bag, it's easier to stay warm with a hat. In the house in winter, I've found that I can comfortably shave a good five degrees off my thermostat (and a lot of dollars off my heating bills) if I wear a knit hat while I'm sleeping, or even when I'm sitting at my desk working at home.

3. Heating pad. Electric blankets make me nervous, but I do love an electric heating pad on my lap for that extra "oomph" I seem to always need when I'm curled up on the sofa with a book. And like with a nightcap, I can keep the thermostat turned down and save dollars while I burn a few pennies in electricity.

So, three tips that seem a little old-fashioned to me, but which make the homestead a little more pleasant when the weather turns cold. Later this week: care and feeding of down comforters!

The two things to do after an emergency

Back to blogging after several days off! Let's see. In the past 10-odd days, Rowhouse Livin' dealt with Superstorm Sandy; a few planned and unplanned days when my daughter wasn't in school; a half-day in continuing legal education (I swear I don't procrastinate to meet my yearly requirements by the end of my compliance period); and Election Day, which I spent supervising a team of volunteers conducting non-partisan exit polls regarding voter ID, a controversial issue here in Pennsylvania and particularly in Philadelphia.

I love working election days, even off-years, and even off-year primaries, when turnouts are crazy low. My usual work involves visiting all the polling places in a ward and gathering information about turnout, poll staffing, and so on for a non-partisan watchdog organization. Usually I do my canvassing in Brewerytown, a neighborhood I don't get to regularly. It's a lovely change in the home-work-school-errands routine; it's a privilege check for when I feel like complaining about how my money is tight; and the data helps inform policy work for better election practices.

But back to Rowhouse Livin' urban home economics.

After Sandy finished rolling through the northeast, I saw a few news items and social media posts about what to do to get rid of your home's emergency supplies. And I said, "What?! Why would anyone get rid of their emergency supplies?"

I mean, I think the intention was noble. I think the idea was to have people donate their surplus blankets, canned foods, and sanitation supplies to others who had lost everything. But here at Rowhouse Livin', we know two things that you should do instead.

1. Keep, rotate, and replenish your own emergency supplies. Whether you used just a single can of ravioli or you went through a week's worth of batteries, bottled water, and beans, now is the time to look at your stores and evaluate what's up. Make a list of what you need to bring your pantry up to the level you need, and get cracking on building up your supply again. Do it in one fell swoop, or pace it out over several trips to the store, but do it soon! Areas of the northeast that got slammed by Sandy were hit with snow and more power outages in a nor'easter just a week later. Anything can happen, and sometimes things happen one right after another. Rowhouse Livin' operates on the principle that "extra" emergency supplies aren't unneeded; they're just not needed, yet.

2. Donate only cash. Unless you know you can meet a specific, stated need from a shelter, agency, or family, don't donate goods -- whether food, household necessities, clothing, or equipment -- for a few reasons. One, groups like the Red Cross don't have the person power to process non-cash donations. Every sack of clothes you donate takes time, hands, and physical space away from providing services. Even if you donate brand-new things, like underwear in the original package and a case of MREs, it takes time and personnel to sort and deliver the items. Two, groups like the Red Cross know what they need better than you do, and they can get a better deal on supplies than you can. To illustrate these two points, let's say the Red Cross knows that a shelter in north Jersey needs soap. Should you buy a pack of soap, or even a case, and drop it off at the Red Cross office in town? Heck, no! The Red Cross can negotiate larger quantities at a better price than you can, and may even be able to get a pallet donated and delivered to a particular location, free of cost. But if you donate a pack of soap, now people at the Red Cross have to coordinate delivery of that soap: research where it needs to go, organize the delivery, put it on the truck, deliver it, unload the truck, direct distribution, and complete the paperwork involved. If you had given cash, they could have delivered more soap to the shelter at a lower cost in person-hours and in money.

What about the Salvation Army, you say? Same principle. Give only cash to the headquarters or local offices. Give saleable clothes and household items to the thrift stores (call first or talk to a manager to ask what kinds of items work for them), because that's where they have the person-hours and physical space to process donations and turn them into cash.

Huge exception: have you received a very specific request for particular things? Then see what you can do to help. For example, I'll be attending a Sandy relief fundraiser this weekend where the organizer has specifically asked for blankets and flashlights. I hope people bring blankets and flashlights -- but I hope they bring brand new blankets and flashlights that they bought that morning, not blankets and flashlights they retrieved from their own homes. Because if they do, then what happens the next time there's an emergency here?

Bottom line, your own "extra" emergency supplies? Keep 'em, and give cash, instead.

Superstorm Sandy recap

Rowhouse Livin' made it through the storm completely unscathed, and the people in the communities and states that were affected by anything from power outages to flooding and fires are in my thoughts. Like many people from the mid-Atlantic, I've spent my share of summers at the Delaware and Jersey shores; the damage at Rehoboth, Dewey, Ocean City, and elsewhere is saddening. And the personal losses of those who lost their homes or friends and family is heartbreaking.

Philadelphia was so lucky in its location -- we were near the center of the storm, directly in its path, which is unexpectedly a safer place to be than on the outer edges -- and our officials worked hard to ask people to stay inside during the high winds, to evacuate residents from flood-prone areas, and to get services up and running very soon afterward. The worst damage on my block was a commercial sign that lost a single zip-tie, so that the bottom half of the sign was left dangling awkwardly. It's far more amusing than hazardous.

Here at the homestead our utilities never failed at all. We kept our computers and other devices plugged in, to keep the batteries fully charged in case the electric did cut off, and I spent much of the day watching cable news streaming online. (Whether that was completely wise is another question!) We were stuck inside, because of the danger of debris being blown around the streets. But we ate ordinary meals, able to use the fridge and stove with no trouble. I even baked a bread pudding out of bread crumbs I had taken out of the freezer to make room for extra ice.

Now I'm about out of eggs again.

I have only two complaints about the storm. One, I've had to figure out how to incorporate bean sprouts into three days' worth of suppers, since I had started three days' worth ahead of time, certain that our electric would go out. I've done a penne rigate with pesto sauce and bean sprouts, a butternut squash soup with bean sprouts, and . . .  I don't know yet what I'll do tonight, but I'm glad tonight's the last night with these crazy bean sprouts! (My daughter likes to eat them raw by the handful, but I'm wary.)

Two, my bathroom ventilation fan failed sometime early on Tuesday. Now, I'm honestly a little glad that it failed, because it's wired on a single switch with the bathroom light, so it engages every time the light is turned on, whether you need it (odors, shower steam) or not (brushing and flossing). But it's actually bad news, because I don't have a window in the bathroom. It's a wholly interior room of, natch, a rowhouse: the east wall is the west wall of a bedroom; the west wall is the east wall of a hallway; the north wall holds the door to a hallway; and the south wall is the party wall to the next rowhouse. While I'm happy this happened now that it's cooler and less humid outside, rather than during the summer, when mildew would be harder to control, it's a very high-priority project. Maybe the silver lining is that this is a good opportunity to put a fan and the light on different switches. Anyway, I guess I have a my work cut out for me this weekend.

Did the storm take out my bathroom fan? I probably wouldn't be able to convince my homeowners' insurance company so. And if it's the least of my Superstorm Sandy problems, I know we're one lucky, lucky household.

Home canning: apple butter

Apple butter marks the end of the summer canning season here at Rowhouse Livin'. We've been steadily putting up batches of jam and marmalade since June, but now it's slim pickin's for fruit at the farmers market, and that means it's time for apple butter. Into the kitchen!

As always, if you are not familiar with home canning, please see the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This recipe does not substitute for a complete set of instructionson safe home canning practices.

We're going for a full canner load of 7 pints. First, carefully wash and then coarsely chop about 8 pounds of apples . . .

Checking in from directly in the path of Hurricane/Nor'easter Sandy

The Rowhouse Livin' household's "default" status is to keep on hand enough food and necessaries for two weeks, a figure I've arrived at after considering factors like the location and construction of our home, the space we have available, and the realistically low possibility that any of our utilities would be out for an extended period. We're a two-person household of a teenager and an adult, and the household's biggest risk is that I'll be unable to leave the house due to an illness (flu, migraine) or injury (sprained ankle). I have ready-to-eat foods on hand, in the form of granola bars, tuna fish, and commercially and home-canned foods, as well as E-Z prep convenience foods, like instant noodle bowls and condensed soups.

Hurricane Sandy has added a wrinkle to our preparedness, though, because the bad news is that the storm is expected to pass almost directly through my neighborhood. It's a little nerve-wracking, because we may actually lose our power for a few days, very different from the super infrequent, super short-term outages we may get in a bad summer thunderstorm or utility accident -- like that one time a transformer blew across the street. A multi-day outage is a very unusual circumstance for us, so I took a few unusual precautions:

We spent much of yesterday (Sunday) doing some deep cleaning, including an extra load of laundry, running the dishwasher when it wasn't completely full, and some very eco-unfriendly bleaching in the bathroom. Now we won't run out of underwear; we have plenty of clean dishes; and, well, the bathroom is just more pleasant now that it may be getting about three times its ordinary use this week.

Three days ago, I started some sprouts from mung bean seeds. Yesterday, we picked up about seven pounds of apples from the farmers market. Neither the sprouts nor the apples need to be refrigerated, so we're set for the vitamins and fiber we'll need from fresh produce for a while. The first round of sprouts are ready to eat today, but they'll be better tomorrow and Wednesday.

Three days ago, I started making extra ice for use if the refrigerator loses power, and for drinking water. Making it on my own over the course of a few days is essentially cost-free, and, frankly, less work than hauling home sacks of ice from the grocery store or beer distributor. In addition, I already keep my freezer lightly packed with used, cleaned water bottles and plastic yogurt tubs re-filled with tap water. Though freezing isn't a big part of my pantry strategy, keeping the freezer packed with ice helps it run more efficiently. The ice cube ice is potable; and both the ice cubes and the bottles and tubs can serve as freezey packs if the electric goes and I need to empty the fridge into a couple of coolers.

I did my shopping way in advance. Luckily, I came to a stopping point in my work that day and could do it late in the morning. But if I'd been slammed with work all day long, I would have gone in the evening. I wanted to avoid the stress of dealing with nervous crowds and empty shelves.

Today, we're doing dishes by hand as we dirty them; we've plugged in all our devices (phones, laptop computers, other gadgets); and I'm knocking out this blog post before the Internet cuts out.

And finally, I've banked up a blog post about home canning apple butter, which should publish tomorrow whether my power is out or not. Take care, and I'll see you on the flip side!

Awaiting the "Frankenstorm"

How are we doing for storm preparation, readers? Here's the National Hurricane Center's prediction as of time of writing, early afternoon on Friday 26 October:

So Philadelphia will likely be hit late Monday, early Tuesday

The prediction, as I understand it, is that the hurricane, which is pretty large and so has a lot of energy in it, will hit a nor'easter when it gets far enough north, creating "perfect storm" conditions on a possibly unprecedented scale.

I was writing a lot about this kind of thing back in August. Was anything I wrote helpful? I think the only thing I would add at this point is that a person shouldn't watch too much TV and shouldn't keep hitting refresh on weather websites. The storm is looking to be bizarrely strong and dangerous, but the hype and alarm aren't helpful once one has the basic facts.

As for preparation here at the Rowhouse Livin' household, we were coincidentally out of eggs on Friday, so I went the supermarket before noon. As I browsed the aisles, I honestly couldn't think of anything else I needed -- my migraine earlier in the month barely affected our pantry supply of easy-prep and ready-to-eat foods, and the only thing I was out of was ground cinnamon.

And we can't be out of cinnamon as we approach pumpkin pie season!

So I picked up a couple of oddball imported jams, some jars of two-for-one pesto sauce (excellent calories for cold weather), a few pounds of wheat berries, and a tin of paprika.

Storms are less dramatic when you're prepared.

Q & A: Storing canning gear

The Rowhouse Livin' mailbag got the following question:

Q. How do you store all your canning equipment?

Many canning tools are "unitaskers" that don't see use outside of canning projects. I'll use the candy thermometer for candy and the food mill for applesauce maybe once a year, and the funnel for filling jars with dry goods, I guess. But most of the time the gear needs to be packed up and moved out of my way. The most convenient way I've found to deal with it all is to pack it into the canner itself:

I used to have a larger canner

This is a 7-pint canner. It is a girly canner. I used to have a 7-quart canner, but it was old when I acquired it, and it rusted through. It was late in the season when I went to replace it, and there were only small, girly canners left in the store, so I had to bring home what I had to bring home. While I can easily put up a full batch of pints or half-pints of sweet spread in a canner this size, what I can't do is put up quarts of fruit. Instead, I have to water-bath them in the pressure canner pot, which takes more fuel and more time to heat up than any thin-walled graniteware kettle. Frustrating! My only consolation is that this canner does fit better on my stove than a 7-quart canner would.

But just about everything fits: canning funnel, jar tongs,
Foley food mill, candy thermometer

All in one place. This way, when I start a canning project, I don't have to hunt all over the kitchen and pantry for canning-specific tools.

As for jars, I mentioned before that I keep them in the boxes they came in. I store packs of new lids on top of those boxes, where I can keep an eye on how many I have. And as for the screw bands:

Wire coathangers

I learned this tip from a friend who grew up on a homestead in Alaska. This is only half my stash; I swear I have more screw bands than jars, though I can't fathom why that's the case.

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Two key rules for sensible pantry management

Mormons are counseled to keep on hand enough food and household supplies to last three months or even a full year without returning to the store. "Preppers" sometimes focus just on surviving short-term problems with natural disasters, but they generally dig the one-year rule of thumb, as well.

So let's fast-forward a little bit and say that you have your food supply stored up, for whatever timeframe works for you. That's great! But there's a potential problem brewing. The food you don't eat is money and effort down the drain. It takes up space, cluttering your home. How do you consume what you've stored before it spoils or loses all nutritional value?

Rule 1: Eat out of your food storage. Treat your food supply like a convenience store. Every night after cleaning up from dinner, "go shopping" for tomorrow's dinner in the fridge and the pantry. Find something that's nearing its expiration date, or something looking a little wilted, or something you have a crazy surplus of, and plan the menu around that item. Put some beans on to soak. Pick out the spices you feel like using when you cook the beans tomorrow. Are you running low on something? Add it to your grocery list.

As an aside, note that, depending on how often you go shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables, pantry "shopping" can mean that you may go for a stretch without having a salad or a raw piece of fruit with your meal. Especially in winter, if you don't have a garden. Say you hit the grocery store once a week, on Saturday. Your dark, leafy greens may look pretty gnarly by the next Saturday, so you tend to finish them up early in the week. But what to do by Thursday or Friday when the fridge is getting bare? One thing you can do is start some sprouts on Sunday or Monday. Sprouts from your own seeds, that is, in case your grocery store announces they won't sell them any more.

The main idea here is that if you don't eat out of your food storage, then you risk throwing out everything you have as it expires. That makes no sense! Your food storage isn't some hermetically sealed warehouse or seed bank that you never touch; it's an economically sound and constantly renewing source of nourishment for your household.

Rule 2: Don't store what you won't eat. If you don't have the skill, desire, or equipment to make bread and pasta from whole, unprocessed wheat berries, then don't buy sacks of wheat. If you think pineapple is grody, then don't get a flat of cans just because they're a good source of Vitamin C and fiber and you found them on sale cheap. Many resources in print and on the Internet include "helpful" lists of foods to store, and they'll tell you to keep wheat and canned fruit. But don't blindly follow any list you find. Instead, look at your household's dietary practices and build your pantry based on what you eat now and what works for your meal preparations.

Maybe your household's diet could use some improvement -- most of us would benefit a little change here or there -- but don't waste money building a pantry that you should eat from. Build a pantry that you will eat from. If you don't like or can't use the food in your food storage, then you won't eat out of your food storage. And then you're on the other side of the coin of Rule 1, and you end up wasting the food you acquired because it spoiled before you could steel yourself to choke it down.

There are plenty of other rules and tips to keep in mind for pantry management. You need to give your storage area a good deep cleaning once per year, for example, and you have to keep it organized so that you know what you have, where you have it, and by what date it needs to be used up. But these are the key rules under which all the other rules and tips fall. Happy prepping!

Q & A: Care and feeding of home canning jars

The Rowhouse Livin' mailbag got the following question:

Q. How do you take care of your mason jars after you've used them?

For all practical purposes, mason jars last indefinitely if you take care of them properly. People on the Internet will tell you that they use 50-year-old jars all the time and haven't broken one yet. Anecdotally, the oldest jars in my own regular canning rotation are nearly 20 years old. Experts caution (PDF) that you shouldn't expect a jar to last more than 13 years. (My guess is that jars that undergo pressure canning year after year get worn out somehow with the stress, and they become more and more prone to thermal shock breakage.) But whether your jars last 50+ years or a mere 13 years, jar care starts as soon as you open them to enjoy whatever it was you last canned.

When removing food from a jar, use plastic or silicone utensils, or use very great care with your knife or spoon. Your goal is to avoid scoring or scratching the interior surface of the jar, with a mark you may not even be able to see, which can weaken the jar's integrity. A weakened jar can fail in your canner, especially in a pressure canner. And there are few sounds more disheartening than the thock of a jar blowing in the canner.

Once you've emptied the jar, fill it with water and let it soak for a few hours or overnight. No need for detergent; but be sure not to fill a hot jar with cold water, or vice versa. Then wash by hand with the rest of the dishes and let air dry.

I prefer not to put canning jars in the dishwasher, because I read somewhere that dishwasher detergent is bad for jars. Additionally, I prefer to really reach my (freakishly small) hand in the jar to feel for residue, and carefully visually inspect the jar after rinsing.

Remove limescale hard water deposits from jars by swishing some white vinegar inside and out, and then rinse with plain water.

Set the clean, dry jar upside down in your storage area. I've kept the cardboard boxes in which I purchased my jars, and use them to corral the jars in one section of my pantry cabinet. If cardboard is problematic for you -- for example, if your storage area is damp or you risk an insect or mouse problem -- then find some large, plastic storage totes. To avoid scratches and breakage, line the bottom of a tote with an old, clean towel; and place another towel between layers of jars if the tote is deep enough for you to stack the jars. Don't forget the lid! Finally, keep your boxes or totes in an area that's easily accessible. Make it so that it takes just a few seconds to carry a clean jar to the storage area, put the jar away, and close the box or tote. This way, home canning becomes an everyday part of your pantry strategy and housekeeping practice, not a tiresome chore that involves trekking to the attic or a dark corner of the basement.

In the end, the better you clean and store your jars, the less work you'll have to do when you take them out for use next canning season. Most manuals and web pages will tell you to wash the jars in hot, soapy water immediately prior to using them again -- but why? They were clean when you put them away! Unless you find evidence that mice got into your jars, just rinse them and heat them in the canner. (If you do find mouse issues, then by all means wash the jars, soak them in a bleach solution, and then rinse with plain water before using again.) So long as you process your food for at least 10 minutes, you don't need to pre-sterilize the jars.

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Changing seasons, changing linens and clothes (Part 2 of 2)

A few more tasks to get through, and then we're good to go . . . until spring, when we'll change everything back for summer. (See Part 1 here.)

Literally rotate clothes and linens from back to front. Set aside a block of time to empty your dressers and closets completely, move summer things to the back, and move winter things to the front. In the process, check for linen moths. If you find moths, deal with them immediately. Discard (do NOT donate) unsalvageable items by tying them up in the trash and putting them outdoors; clean, treat, and mend the items you can keep; and vacuum the closet and furniture (PDF). After you've vacuumed, put cleaned clothes away (PDF). Finally, try to remember if you acquired any of the moth-infested items at a second-hand shop. If so, consider never shopping at that particular store again, or at least quarantining and prophylactically dry-cleaning items you buy from that shop in the future.

In the coat closet here at Rowhouse Livin', this means moving my summer hats to a higher shelf and bringing down my winter caps, scarves, and gloves. Plural, because I'm a cold-blooded person, in more than one sense of the word. This year, I found a hole in an upscale name-brand knit hat, one in a color that's still fashionable this year, and knit in a toasty-warm and soft cashmere and wool. "Curses!" I said when I found it -- until I remembered that I'd literally picked the hat up off the sidewalk a block from my home last year, around midnight when the street was deserted. Hey, free hat! So one of my mending tasks this year is to kludge some kind of repair, likely involving a crocheted flower or star over the hole, and hopefully something that's not Regretsy-worthy.

Check your shoes, too. Empty out your shoes' storage area and clean it. Clean, brush, and polish the shoes. Deodorize, if needed, using one or more of the following methods: (1) Leave them out in the sun or in a very sunny window for a full day; (2) Spray the interior of the shoes with 91% rubbing alcohol, which will kill viruses and bacteria; (3) Spray the interior of the shoes with white distilled vinegar, and leave them in the sun; (4) Fill old socks loosely with baking soda, place the socks into the shoes, and literally bake the shoes at your oven's lowest setting for a few hours -- but do this last one at your own risk of melting cheap shoes. After treating the shoes and letting them dry completely, stuff them with paper and store them away. Whether put in their original boxes, or in a home organizing solution, or simply off to the side of the closet, the shoes should be stored so that they won't get dusty over the next several months or get marred by muddy, salty winter shoes stored near them.

Plus bags and other accessories. If you use different handbags, backpacks, or totes from one season to the next, now is the time to check them out, too. (For example, one handbag I love to use is made of lightweight, light-colored canvas and has flip-flops embroidered on it. I could be ironic and use it in February, but of course I only ever take it out when it's sunny and warm. It coordinates with a sundress and sandals, not a parka and snow boots.) Empty the bags out -- really look to make sure there isn't a lonely granola bar down in a hidden pocket, or cash, or some paperwork or anything you've forgotten. Launder them, if you can, or take them for professional leather cleaning and repair, if brushing them off or wiping them down won't get them clean enough.

Hats: Since of course you wear a broad-brimmed hat in the summer, you'll need to move these to the back of your closet now, too. Launder, or clean gently by wiping, or rinse and re-block, depending on the type of hat. Most baseball caps will have washing instructions sewn in. Very importantly, let everything dry completely before putting it away, or you risk creating a mold problem in the closet. And mold is much, much easier to prevent than to eliminate.

And now you're done. Your clothes and linens are switched out for the season and you're set until warm weather returns. Did I leave anything out?

Changing seasons, changing linens and clothes (Part 1 of 2)

So the frost is on the pumpkin and it's time to dig the blankets and sweaters out of storage and put our summer linens and clothes away until spring rolls around again. It's a good time to clear out unstylish clothes; items that are irretrievably damaged; and things you just won't use again.

I'll list a number of tasks here. Maybe it's a lot of tasks. Maybe it's too many, and I'm looney-tunes for doing all of these things every six months. But you don't have to do all of them in one day, or even one week. I'm not even putting them all in one post. And it's most onerous the first time you do it: the work you put in now pays off in time and in your budget later on. Here goes!

Change the bed linens, whether they need it or not. Replace with "winter" linens, and put the summer-weight linens in the laundry. Do this item first, so that at the end of the day, when you don't feel like moving any further down this list, you'll have a freshly made bed to fall into.

Go through the closet and dresser and evaluate your summer clothes for cleanliness. Launder everything that was just airing out. For example, I keep a couple of loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirts to wear as toppers over tank tops, to keep my arms from tanning unevenly. I'm vain. But these shirts don't get terribly sweaty or dirty after a single wearing, so I leave them on a hanger outside of the closet for a day or so before putting them away. They get laundered maybe once every two weeks. But the last time I put them in the closet, were they laundered first? If I have any doubt, I launder them in this last-of-summer batch. If they go away less than perfectly fresh, they'll impart a stale odor to everything else in the closet and attract linen moths.

Evaluate your summer clothes for mending needs. I hate fixing buttons and repairing seams, and I know you do, too. So I make it a twice-per-year chore (with emergency sessions during the year as needed) to haul out the sewing machine and do some needed repairs. Put on a movie, serve up a tasty beverage, and get to work. Or go to the tailor's and stop by a bar on the way home for a tasty beverage and a ball game. Either way, you'll thank yourself next spring when you pull these clothes out of the closet with joy at the return of warm weather, and you don't have to toss something aside because of a missing button.

Evaluate your summer clothes for "I never wear this any more." Be honest, and be tough. Is there anything among your summer clothes that you never wore, all summer long? (Not sure? Here's a trick I think I saw on Lifehacker: At the beginning of the season, hang your clothes backward in the closet, with the point of the hanger facing out instead of in. After you've taken it out and worn it, replace it in the closet with the hanger facing in, the correct way. At the end of the season, anything with the hanger still facing out wasn't worn. Proceed to the next step.) Then get rid of it! Don't wait until you lose weight, or that style comes around again, or you get around to having a tag sale, or whatever. Just hand the item down to a friend or donate it to charity. If it's super shabby, call your charity and ask if they take unsaleable items anyway. Locally, Philadelphia AIDS Thrift re-sells raggedy clothes as "weight": cloth by the pound that is recycled into carpet padding or put to other industrial uses. But please call your charity first to see if they do this; donated trash is no donation.

Evaluate your summer and winter clothes for "What do I need?" Make a list. Right now is an excellent time to buy summer clothing at end-of-season closeout prices, and to find the best pickin's of winter clothing at thrift stores, where they are often rolling out their cold-weather stock for the first time since last winter.

More tomorrow!